Tsuyama massacre

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The Tsuyama massacre was a murder spree that occurred on 21 May 1938 in a rural village close to Tsuyama city in Okayama, Japan. The massacre resulted in the deaths of 30 people and the serious injury of three. This number of victims had been considered the world's worst massacre by a single criminal for a long time, up until Woo Bum-Kon killed 57 people (the number varies by sources) in 1982 in South Korea.

Mutsuo Toi, a 21-year-old man, began preparing the previous evening (20 May). He cut the electricity line and blacked out the village. At around 1:30am on 21 May, he started his spree by killing his own grandmother, who had brought him up after his parents died when he was a baby. After that, he took up a rifle and Japanese swords, and killed 29 neighbors in about an hour and half. He committed suicide after finishing the massacre.

Toi left several long notes. According to them, he killed the neighbours because they insulted him after he was found to have tuberculosis, which was considered incurable at the time. He regretted that he could not shoot several people he had intended to, while shooting other people he had not intended to. He also wrote that he killed his grandmother at first because he could not bear leaving her as the "murderer's grandmother".